I’m starting to do a few swatches for my secret lace project, so what Kate Gilbert has been doing with gauge swatches is particularly relevant right now and particularly clever as well. Forgetting which needles you used for which swatches? Knit (or purl) the number into the swatch! Brilliant!

In the same vein, I also want to talk about a post by Yarn Harlot from a few days ago. Here’s what she says about ganseys:

…After a couple of rounds I knit in Joe’s initials. This is a traditional feature of a gansey, allegedly for identifying a drowned sailor. (Another feature of the gansey is that it is close fitting, so as not to wash off in the water.) Joe is a fine sailor, and unlikely to wear his gansey swimming, but I thought that it was best to include this. If I’m going to knit a handspun traditional gansey then I might as well go all out.

I was completely blown away by this. I love little historical tidbits, so historical tidbits combined with knitting combined with ingenuity and fishing, that’s some tasty gravy. If I didn’t have a standing rule not to knit the beau a sweater (due to the fact that it’s a curse and all that), I would go out right now and buy ten hundred pounds of charcoal wool and knit his initials into the finest darn gansey you have ever seen. The fact that he has four initials makes it even better. All the more initials to love him with.

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